On November 5th, the 4k restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" will be released nationwide, this 1983 classic animation produced by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, is China's third color feature-length animation film, is the common childhood memory of generations, and has a milestone significance in the history of Chinese animated feature films.
On October 20th, Watermelon Video and Volcano Engine held a "Rebuild the Old Good" classic video 4k restoration conference in Beijing. The first partners of the restoration plan include CCTV Animation Group and Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, and 6 animation films after 4K restoration, "Nezha Legend", "Hulu Brothers", "Black Cat Sheriff", "Big Head Son and Little Head Daddy", "Little Carp Adventure", "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" have been launched on Watermelon Video. In the coming year, 4K restored versions of 100 cartoons such as "Haha Mirror Flower Edge" and "Shuk and Beta" will also be launched.
"Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Gourd Brothers", "Black Cat Sheriff" restored version poster.
The Beijing News reporter interviewed the relevant person in charge of the animation restoration team and listened to them tell some insider stories in the animation restoration. Compared with live-action drama films, the restoration of animated films is simpler in the texture of real-life objects and the restoration of the authenticity of details, but the difficulty is that the artistry of animation is relatively rich, with puppets, ink, paper-cutting and other different artistic styles, for different artistic animation to do restoration, and to maintain the original taste is a great challenge. The restoration of animated films is not as clear as possible, but also consistent with the rhythm style of animation.
Ren Lifeng, president of Watermelon Video, said: "Whether it is repairing cartoons or repairing old images in the home, in the final analysis, it is not just to improve its clarity. What we want to repair is the memories behind these contents, to show the resonance and spark that generations have generated because of these memories. That's where the value of repair lies. ”
Restoration is in the inheritance
It also brings new feelings
In recent years, 4K equipment and 4K video content have gradually become popular, but a large number of classic content has a lower definition due to earlier production time. So the watermelon video and the volcano engine work together to repair the classic animation. I hope to help the inheritance of classics, the use of new technologies, the maximum restoration of works, and bring new feelings and cognitions to everyone.
In August last year, Watermelon Video proposed the concept of medium video to describe the form of horizontal screen content of 1-30 minutes. This year, when Ren Lifeng, president of Watermelon Video, was looking for cartoons for his 3-year-old son, he suddenly remembered that China Video is not only available today. The vast majority of cartoons are within 30 minutes of a single episode. The well-known cartoons such as "Monkey Fishing moon" and "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" are independent short films, telling a complete story in ten minutes, with ups and downs, climaxes, and deep meanings. These cartoons are actually the most classic medium videos.
"The Legend of Nezha" was restored and compared with the original stills.
In Ren Lifeng's view, China Video is not limited to Watermelon Video or other video platforms. The children's favorite "Hulu Brothers" and "The Legend of Nezha" are medium videos, some of the images produced by self-media that are more popular among netizens are medium videos, and the "Animal World" that the older generation watches on TV is also medium videos. Including every year, the Oscars will also set up three separate short film awards, of which the nominations and award-winning works are the top Medium Video content of each era.
The medium video platform that Watermelon Video wants to do includes both current and future content, as well as the past. They have increased their investment, encouraged the creation of high-quality Chinese videos, and are equally willing to spend effort to repair those classic Chinese video content.
In fact, there is also Ren Lifeng's selfish heart as a father. The values of integrity and kindness in these classic animations played a very important role in his growth. He wanted his children to have some of the same childhood enlightenment as he did.
Fix The Gourd Brothers
200,000 maps need to be processed manually
Ren Lifeng said that what the repair does is to brush away the dust brought by time. In the coming year, Watermelon Video and Volcano Engine will work together to restore 100 classic video content. The relevant person in charge of watermelon video told the Beijing News reporter that in the process of animation repair, there are four main types of common problems: first, low definition, due to the limitations of shooting conditions at that time, resulting in low picture resolution, or blur caused by blurred shooting lens, loss of texture details in the process of digital scanning and compression; second, low fluency, less than the number of old film shooting or hand-drawn frames, often less than 15 frames per second. At present, most of the film frame rate is above 25 frames, some can reach 60 frames or even 120 frames; the third is color distortion, the old film is made of the old color standard, the brightness dynamic range is generally relatively low, so the picture contrast is also relatively poor; the fourth is more defective, the old film in the preservation, playback process caused by physical and chemical damage, easy to appear noise, dead pixels, scratches and other defects.
Ren Lifeng said that during the restoration process, the team invested the most in noise and scratch problems. Every playback of the film brings irreversible damage. Among the films the team is working on is a sixty-two-year-old cartoon, Cuckoos Call Late (1959), which is almost all scratches.
Even an animation like Hulu Brothers (1986), which has been digitized twice, can get a lot of bad spots and noise due to film damage. These problems cannot be fixed simply by technology, but let the restoration team manually annotate frame by frame and then do secondary repairs. Generally one second of animation, there are 24 frames, that is, 24 static pictures, repair a "Hulu Brothers", about 200,000 pictures need to be manually processed, this workload is very large.
The "Hulu Brothers" cartoon was once a precious childhood memory of a generation.
But in the era of pure hand animation production, the old artists also came frame by frame. The camera shoots 24 images in one second, and even if there is a slight difference in the movement and background layer, it has to be restarted. Zhou Keqin, one of the directors of "Hulu Brothers", had an interview before, he said that sometimes it took three days to shoot, it was difficult to finish a shot, and once he saw through the help, he had to start again, and the animation of a few seconds could take three more days.
Unlike video and text, the text itself does not "fade" with time. Decades of literature, seen today, are mostly without information missing. However, due to the wear and tear of the film, the video will produce some dirty spots, scratches and other problems, and some details will not be so clear.
The two animated episodes "The Legend of Nezha" and "The Adventures of the Little Carp" are actually relatively close to the present, which were broadcast in 2003 and 2007 respectively, but the original resolution of these two animated episodes was mostly 480p or 720p, and after the 4k repair, the effect presented was significantly improved.
The higher the picture quality, the better
It is necessary to consider the consistency of the artistic effect of the old and new versions
The person in charge of watermelon video said that compared with the restoration of cartoons, the texture of live-action drama objects will generally be more complex and delicate, and the restoration of the authenticity of some details is more difficult. However, the artistry of animation is relatively rich, the artistic methods of different animation films are very different, and the artistic special effects elements of live-action drama films are relatively few, after all, they are mainly physical objects. Therefore, it is also a great challenge to restore animations with different artistry and keep them original.
Because the artistic expression of cartoons is very rich, there are different art styles such as puppets, ink painting, paper cutting, etc., in terms of restoration, different types of animation actually have their own difficulties. For example, "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" (1960) is a traditional Chinese ink animation, and the audience can feel the rhythm and beauty of ink painting in the picture. Therefore, when the restoration team repaired this animation, they had to communicate closely with the art teacher of the film side to ensure that the artistic effect was truly presented. From the perspective of repair technology, the algorithm itself will make adjustments to the effect or intensity, remove some modules that have negative processing effects for ink effects, mainly to repair other picture quality problems, so the ideal repair effect can be achieved.
Stills from "The Little Tadpole Finds Mom".
Everyone is familiar with "Hulu Brothers" is a combination of ink painting and paper-cutting, the protagonists such as Huluwa and Grandpa are paper-cut, and many landscape backgrounds are ink animation. In terms of restoration, on the one hand, the team should improve the clarity of the prospect and make the characters sharper. On the other hand, it is also necessary to take into account the artistic effect of ink painting and keep the landscape soft. This places very high technical demands on the machine to be able to identify good foregrounds and future scenarios.
Retaining the artistic style and beauty of old films, the picture quality is not as high as possible, and professional art directors are required to participate. For example, when the team repaired the musical cartoon "I Am Crazy for Song" (2001), it adopted the conventional old film restoration method to improve the smoothness of the picture. However, after being given to the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, it was rejected by the other party. Teacher Fu said that it is that kind of stuttering that has a sense of rhythm. If you use technical means to increase the video frame rate, it will destroy the sense of rhythm.
Ren Lifeng said that what is really difficult to repair the old animation is precisely this part of the artistry. Some of the old films are badly damaged by the film and have many defects. In the process of intelligent processing technology to repair the defects of old films, some will add manual repair. If the algorithm is required to handle 100% of the flaws, it is possible to identify some artistic effects as flaws as well. At present, the algorithm can solve more than 95% of the defect problems, and the remaining defects need to be marked by manual assistance. Then tell the algorithm that adjusting the algorithm to do secondary optimization requires certain human support.
A 15-minute "Little Tadpole Finds Mom", how long is the whole repair cycle? The person in charge of watermelon video said that the actual repair process is very fast. However, due to the relatively large differences in the artistic guidance of different films, it takes a long cycle to communicate with the filmmakers, and it is difficult to accurately define the restoration cycle with a film.
"Heavenly Book" is difficult to repair in sound
In 2018, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio launched the restoration project of "Tianshu Qitan" in an all-round way, during which it experienced physical restoration, film washing, digital scanning, color grading, sound restoration and other links, the biggest difficulty was in the sound restoration link. After 35 years, voice actor Ding Jianhua once again voiced the protagonist of the film, Egg Sheng. She often hears praise from others: "For so many years, how the voice has not changed." Ding Jianhua knew in his heart: "Where will I remain unchanged." "If the dialogue of the main characters cannot be accurately restored, the audience will rub shoulders with the memory."
The popular melody in "Tianshu Qitan" comes from the pen of the famous composer Mr. Wu Yingju, and the work of rearranging music for the film is handed over to Shen Yiwen, a new generation composer in Shanghai, and when he takes over Wu Yingju's score, he has to face unexpected challenges, "All the dubbing, sound effects, and the recording of the band are all on one track, and there is no single track for me to listen to."
Qian Yunda, director of "Heavenly Book", is on the soundtrack scene of the restored version.
The new version of the soundtrack makes extensive use of Western symphonic elements, while the old version of the soundtrack focuses on folk music expression, and in the face of a more imposing symphonic soundtrack, the sound production team began to hesitate how to combine the new music with the old version of the music. Voice director Zhang Yang said that if you look at it from the perspective of quality or pure technology, of course, you hope to use the current technology to make it better, but in the process of changing, it may also hurt the original creation, so you must consider it very carefully. After countless auditions, the team decided to mix and match the old and new soundtracks, striving for the most accurate mood for each part.
The value of restoration lies in the memory behind it
According to Ren Lifeng, Watermelon Video will open the function of HD repair in the background of creation to every ordinary user, helping everyone to restore those moments that have special significance to themselves. For example, the wedding video of my parents forty or fifty years ago, the video of our college reunion ten years ago, etc., those blurred images of many years ago, carrying the brightest moments in the lives of generations of people.
Ren Lifeng hopes that this feature can bring those faded precious videos back to life. Watermelon Video restores classic cartoons so that they are clearly presented to the next generation, both restoring collective memories and sharing the childhood imagination of one generation. "I think that the development of technology is not only to run forward and run into the distance, but also sometimes to slow down, stop, and see where we are coming from."
Ren Lifeng said: "Whether it is repairing cartoons or repairing old images in the home, it is not just to improve its clarity. What we want to repair is the memories behind these contents, to show the resonance and spark that generations have generated because of these memories. That's where the value of repair lies. ”
Teng Chao, a senior reporter of the Beijing News
Senior Editor Huang Jialing Proofreader Zhai Yongjun